No. Virginia airports authority says lobbying ban doesn't apply to it

Bob Calhoun, a former state lawmaker said last week the Virginia Port Authority violated the spirit of a lobbying ban he helped craft in 1994.

Calhoun for seven years worked as the state lobbyist for another Virginia-based transportation authority, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. However, MWAA, which no longer employs Calhoun but has a federal lobbyist, says that because its structure differs from that of the VPA it is not subject to the prohibition on lobbying.

"We're aware of the statute but it doesn't apply to us" said MWAA spokesman Rob Yingling, when asked about the lobbying ban for state agencies.

"MWAA was created by an interstate compact between the Commonwealth of Virginia and the District of Columbia (and approved by Congress) ... to acquire by lease Washington Dulles International Airport and Ronald Regan Washington National Airport," according to an opinion written by the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.

The airports authority has argued in court that Virginia FOIA law does not apply to it because of its structure, as well.

The Daily Press first reported on a decade-long lobbying arrangement between the VPA and a federal lobbyist. The VPA's board chair said that for two years, commissioners were in the dark about the situation, which the agency and the Attorney General's Office are now studying.

MWAA did eventually cut ties with Calhoun, who lobbied in Richmond on its behalf from May 2005 to April 2012. Yingling said that was a response to a U.S. Department of Transportation inspector general's report. The report, he noted, had criticized MWAA's no-bid lobbying contract through which Calhoun, a former MWAA board member, was selected.